I’m breaking up with email

I’m in an all-out effort to be more productive and focused. As such, I’m experimenting with various productivity techniques. This week, I’m reducing my dependency on email as a distraction and a vice. It’s harder than I thought. Way. Harder.

I’ve long touted the benefits of checking email two or three times per day when teaching emerging leaders how to be more strategically effective. And just between you and me, I thought I practiced this myself. Until I got real with myself this week and actually turned email off – closed the application, the webmail version and turned off the “new mail” chime on my smartphone. Then the shizzle got real.

Take this morning for example: I’m in my office, prepping for a speech I’m giving on Friday. I’m combing through data from interview research to find the most compelling stories to support the points I’m making. As soon as I bump up against a challenge, like not easily finding a story that illustrates my point, I reach for email.

Or as soon as I come to a natural transition point, I reach for email. I just completed one of the sections of the speech. I have only one section to go (plus the conclusion), and what do I do? I reach for effing email. Sheesh!!

I’ve often spoken about how email is as addictive as cocaine, sugar and Facebook. Somehow, I thought I was immune. I think we all do. We think that we are stronger than that. We, certainly, don’t succumb to the dopamine rush that the brain produces when we get a new email. But alas, we do. Totally.

From an addiction standpoint, email has the perfect combination of elements:

It’s infrequent. You never know exactly when one is coming. Which makes it so much more exciting when you get one!

It’s personal. Even if it is a mailing list you are subscribed to, it’s most often addressed to you personally.

It’s the perfect procrastination tool. It feels like work. Like important work.

And so, on this morning, as the minutes tick down until noon, when I can next check my email (one hour, fourteen minutes to go), I reach for my blog instead, hoping for a hit of dopamine somewhere down the line, when a reader comments on the posting.